Barnaby Joyce and Vikki Campion call for privacy for sake of son

Barnaby Joyce and Vikki Campion have appealed to the public and the media to “move on” after two weeks in which revelations about their affair has dominated Australian politics and threatened to tear the Coalition government apart.

The deputy prime minister and Nationals leader has faced repeated calls to stand aside after his relationship with his former staffer – now pregnant with his son – was made public.

But, bolstered by what he called “humbling, strong support” from voters in his electorate on Wednesday night, he vowed to carry on.

The couple, in their first interview together, called for the scrutiny of their life to stop, saying they feared their son would face stigma in the future unless they were left alone.

“I don’t want to say have sympathy for me,” Joyce told Fairfax Media. “I just want people to look clinically at the facts and basically come to the conclusion he is not getting a gold star for his personal life, but he has made a commitment, he is with her, they’re having a child, and in a 2018 world there is nothing terribly much to see there.”

Interviewed in the house in Armidale controversially gifted to them rent-free by a supporter, Joyce said: “The one thing that has deeply annoyed me is that there is somehow an inference that this child is somehow less worthy than other children, and it’s almost spoken about in the third person.

“I don’t want our child to grow up as some sort of public display. I have to stop it from the start. It’s a fact we are having a child, it’s a fact it’s a boy, it’s not more or less loved than any of my other children.”

Campion, who is reportedly very uncomfortable with the scrutiny she has been under, would not be photographed for the interview.

She limited herself to saying that her son would be named after her brothers.

“Their support has meant so much. They are the only people who knew,” Campion said.

Campion’s salary has been the focus of a lot of reporting, with some claims that she earned $190,000 as a social media adviser. But she produced pay slips in the interviewed which showed that she was paid about $133,000 a year in Joyce’s office, $138,000 when she moved to the office of cabinet minister, Matt Canavan, and $135,000 working for former chief whip Damian Drum.

Joyce said that the media attention was forcing the couple to move out of the Armidale house, adding that it was not the luxury accommodation some reports claimed. “Mate, this is a bachelor’s pad,” Joyce said, who was pictured for the interview in the kitchen with tea towel in hand.

He also denounced the tone of some coverage and how it had turned from “inquiry to malice”.

“It’s like ‘I can’t get you so I’m gonna throw anything’,” he said, and maintained that his private life should be off limits.

“The tide will turn because people will get bored of it.

“This should be a very simple story – a bloke whose marriage broke down is in a relationship with another person and they are having a child. Now it seems to have gone into some sort of morality discussion. That’s between me and my God. I can understand how [his estranged wife] Natalie can be angry, absolutely, but how it’s other people’s business, I don’t know.”

Joyce agreed to take a week’s personal leave to stay out of the spotlight after a tumultuous week when he clashed with Malcolm Turnbull, who said at a media conference that his deputy had brought on a “world of woe” for his family and should “consider his position”. There is also widespread speculation that he will face a spill motion in the Nationals party room next week.